1. Please cite this Article as : , : Golden Research Thoughts
(Sept ; 2012)
Khalil Abdul-Hameed Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability
Volume 2, Issue. 3, Sept 2012
Golden Research Thoughts
The most living thing in Keats's poetry has been the recreation of sensuous beauty, first as a source
of delight for its own sake, then as a symbol of the life of the mind and the emotions. Speculated and
philosophical interests always formed the major part of Shelley's experience, and the young Wordsworth
for a time was hag-ridden by them: there is almost no trace of this in Keats. Keats did not like to foster
abstract thought in himself and his poetry. He cared little for it. In fact, he resented intellectual truths which
make demands upon the mind without being verifiable in immediate experience. I have noticed during my
research work two things – one is his difference with Shelley on the point of intellectualization of his poetry
andhisadviceagainstitandtheotheris his opinionaboutTruthcomingthroughBeauty.
If it is Truth that finally comes to the reader through poetry then the question arises – what type of
Truth is it?And how does it come to the reader? Poets and critics from the time ofAristotle had deliberated
over these questions and found out the answers in which what is personal with the poet, his self, is almost
drowned and negated in what is universal and general. The poet may start with what is personal but, in
course of presenting it in poetry, he has to terminate it into what is universal and general. His personal
thought and vision and ideology are left far behind and what emerges in the form of poetry is universal
which is equally shared by all the passionate readers. This negation of the personal is the mark of a good
poet. It is on this assumption thatAristotle made a distinction between the universal and the particular. The
same approach was adopted by Dryden in his insistence that poetry is an imitation of human nature. Dr
ABSTRACT:
Every poet worth the name has his own understanding of poetry and poetic
form. Although Keats wrote no formal treatise on Poetry as did poets like Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Shelley. Yet, judging from the evidence of his poems and letters, he was as
theory conscious as these poets. Throughout his brief life Keats strove to gain a clear
perception of the nature and function of poetry. This research paper is an attempt to shed
light on Keats's theory of Negative Capability."... Negative Capability, that is when man
is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason." Keats Negative Capability has been identified with the idea of
poet's impersonality and has been taken as being so close to the modern literary theory of
ambiguity.
ISSN:-2231-5063
Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability
Available online at www.aygrt.net
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
GRT
Khalil Abdul-Hameed Mohammed Saif Alquraidhy
Ph. D. Research Scholar, English Department,
Bangalore University

2. Jonson put the emphasis on the general nature of that imitation. Here we come to the question whether
poetry, if it is a representation of human nature, pleases us because it illustrates what we already know, and
so recognize, or by giving us a new illumination, or by somehow doing both simultaneously. We have
Johnson's remarkaboutapassageingray's "Elegy"–"I haveneverseenthenotionsinanyotherplace;yethe
that he reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt them". What he has felt is not the personal
feeling of the poet. It is the general feeling shared by the humanity. If poetry fails to replace the personal by
the general feeling, it suffers from an aesthetic weakness. Shelley's intellectualization is opposed because
of this weakness.The intellectual part is the personal part which people are not always willing to share.That
is, according to Keats, a fault in a poet and his poem. Besides these we are putting the following quotation
fromWordsworth's prefacetoLyricalBallads–
Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its
object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony,
but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and
confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry is the image
of man and nature.The obstacles which stand in the way of the fidelity of the Biographer and Historian, and
of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which are to be encountered by the Poet who
comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of
giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from
him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except
this one restriction, there is no object standing between the Poet and the image of things; between this, and
theBiographerandHistorian,thereareathousand.
David Daiches, in his book Critical Approaches to Literature, Longman, 1977, (P.91) gives a
lengthyexplanationofWordsworth's statement–
The distinction that Wordsworth makes between truth "individual and local" and truth "general
and operative" is similar toAristotle's distinction between historical and poetic truth, and it is linked also to
the question of recognition. Poetic truth for Wordsworth is "operative" – it works on us, it carries its own
conviction with it, so that we can not but acknowledge it as true. "Individual and local" truth does not carry
its own conviction: before we could be sure that a historian or a biographer were telling the truth we should
have to know what his sources were and how honestly he used them. The poet's truth is general in the sense
that it needs no authentication to be recognized as true: it does not "stand upon external testimony" but is
"carried alive into the heart by passion" and is thus its own testimony. Our hearts recognize it as true – not
necessary because we have known it before, but because the psychological structure of our minds assents to
it, it makes contact somehow with the basic mental laws which determine human perception and emotion.
The reaction is thus not literal recognition, but it is recognition in a profounder sense. Again, it is
reminiscentof Keats's laterphrase"almostaRemembrance"(Longman,1977, p.91)
The poet, thus, should have the capability to negate the individual into the general. Only this
negation has the capacity to create "Remembrance" in the mind of the reader and thereby give pleasure to
him – a pleasure that is the true purpose of Poetry. Wordsworth probes deeper into the reasons why general
representation of human nature pleases us. The pleasure we derive from it comes from our having our basic
psychological structured touched and illuminated. Wordsworth goes further: he believed that our
psychological structure is paralleled in the working of the universe as a whole, and one reason why the poet
is able to express truths which are general and operative is that he is "a man pleased with his own passions
and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to
contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually
impelled to create them where he does not find".(Preface to Lyrical Ballads) That is why the poet gives
pleasure "to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer,
a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man."The function of poetry, and its
value, lies in its giving this kind of pleasure. It is a pleasure in which all human beings join with the poet.
Wordsworth says -
…the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is
spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are every where; though
the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an
atmosphereofsensationinwhichtomovehiswings.
(PrefacetoLyricalBallads)
2Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability
Golden Research Thoughts • Volume 2 Issue 3 • Sept 2012

3. Again –
These sudden and passionate glimpses into human nature being with sensation, the sensation of
one whose physical senses are peculiarly alert, and proceed through involuntary recollection through
conscious meditation and introspection to achieve the final and full awareness which is recorded in the
poem
Further–
And the poet "binds together the vast empire of human society" by revealing the common
psychological laws which underlie all sensation and all sensitivity, and revealing it not by showing through
the persuasive concrete illustration – which may be drawn from the experience of a humble or even half-
witted person, a shepherd, a leech-gatherer, or an idiot boy – the primary laws of human nature. The poet
thusrevealstherelationshipof menbothtoeachotherandtotheexternalworld.
In spite of these ideal statements which approach Keats's idea of negative capability by extending
and relating the poet's "sensation" and "sensitivity" to the "primary laws of human nature", Keats has found
fault with Wordsworth's formula of "egotistical sublime". This phrase refers to two things. First it talks of
intellectual truths in art and secondly, it gives a personality to the poet. Both are disliked by Keats for they
comeintheway of thepoet's negativecapability. He says –
Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved on our pulses. We read fine things, but
neverfeelthemtothefulltillwe havegonethesamesteps as theauthor.
Keats almost hates a writer who tries to force the world and the reader to his own conclusions, and
attimeshefeltthatWordsworth didso -
for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain
Philosophyengenderedinthewhimsof anEgotist?....Wehatepoetrythathasapalpabledesignuponus.
Argument and dialectic seem to him an offensive self-assertion. "Man should not dispute or assert,
but whisper results to his neighbor" the essence of the poetical character is that it has no self – It is
everything and nothing. It has no character. It enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high
or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What
shocks thevirtuousphilosopher, delightsthecamelionPoet.”
For Keats, the necessary precondition of poetry is submission to things as they are, without trying
to intellectualize them into something else, submission to people as they are, without trying to indoctrinate
orimprovethem.Keatsfound thisqualityatitsfullestinShakespeare–
it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature and which
Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being
inuncertainties,Mysteries,doubts, withoutanyirritablereachingafterfactandreason.
This way of feeling grows naturally into a strong active and dramatic tendency, a wish to
participate into the life of others, and an understanding of other people. Often Keats feels that this
participation in the life of others, "the agony and strife of human hearts", ought to be the mainspring of his
poetry. But it is not although he was always striving towards that and it is believed perfection in this respect
ifhewouldhavelivedlonger.
The total impression of the moment, the fusion of his own subjective emotion with sensations
from the outside world is the ultimate reality for him. In his letters we are frequently reminded of such a
fusion scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness. I look not for it if it be not in the present hour.
Nothing startles me beyond the Moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a Sparrow come
beforemyWindow, ItakepartinitsexistenceandpickabouttheGravel.
Such a nature did not find its expression in historic narratives of character and events. However, he
tried to express it in his Odes where, at the heights of intense impassioned contemplation, he bound up his
life of the spirit with the objects of immediate sensuous experience. At the moment when they reach each
other, the poet gets the enjoyment of life when he forgets everything, even his Poetry. In Ode on Indolence,
thefirstodewritteninMarch1819, heenjoysthisforgetfulness;nothingis
so sweetas drowsy noons,
And eveningssteep'dinhoniedindolence;
O, for anageso shelter'dfromannoy,
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Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability

4. ThatI mayneverknow how changethemoons,
Or hearthevoiceof busy common-sense!(36-40)
He is still the relaxed and sensuous man. But he knows that it is all exquisite and also utterly
transitory. This knowledge is followed by a strong desire for world in which such moments could become
eternal.All the Odes have this theme of transience and permanency. Keats problem, throughout his life, has
been how to reconcile this contradiction. Can he achieve it in his life and in Poetry? Keats was not different
from other Romantic poets for whom any serene conclusion free from any contradiction was not possible
because of their longing for a world of flux, a world where on a shadowy island of bliss they could forget the
world. So the element of conflict is always there in their life and poetry.And so fusion always escapes them,
keeping it just on the level of desire. However, Keats's attempt goes on although he shows that he does not
know thedefiniteway.
He feels that he can find it in his interior landscape, not in any objective world, not in any power
outside himself. But where is that landscape? And how to have it? He wants to find it in the immediately
experienced moment. He says that "we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere" of such
moments. But among the effects they give rise to is that "of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of
Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and Oppression". This feeling of 'Misery' always follows him when
hetriestoenjoythesensationandsensuousness – pureandserene.
In this background, which was so real and immediate to him, he wrote Ode to a Nightingale. The
poem is not one of contradiction between his misery and the nightingale's joy. It is about the contrast
between his immediate participation in the natural joy of the nightingale living an untroubled natural life
and his enduring knowledge of misery and the miserable world. Happiness is momentary and transient; the
onlythingcertainis–
Theweariness,thefever,andthefret
Here,wheremensitandheareachothergroan;
Wherepalsyshakes afew,sad, lastgrayhairs,
Whereyouthgrows pale,andspectre-thin,anddies;
Wherebuttothinkistobefullofsorrow
And leaden-eyeddespairs;(23-28)
The poem opens with a drowsy numbness. It is not a state of dejection. It is a drugged state to keep
the sensuous happiness – a state enhanced by further intoxication. Wine comes in to make the moment
permanent. Then comes "the viewless wings of Poesy" – a further attempt towards the same purpose. In the
fourth and fifth stanzas some sort of permanence seems to be achieved. But it is not the same as the poet's
desire – the poet who is a living and suffering human being. He makes a further attempt to make it
permanent by dying at the moment of greatest sensuous happiness. But this death is not total extinction – the
most obvious choice on the surface in the world of suffering. This choice will be a sort of encroachment of
outside experience from the outside world. Thereby his innate contentment would be affected, may be even
destroyed. He does not want it; his attempt is to make his joy, his contentment permanent. That is why he is
only "half in love with easful death". His half consciousness is kept intact; it takes him in another direction –
the direction of negation in art. Art after a type of permanence through self- negation. By a startling
transformation in the seventh stanza the nightingale becomes a symbol of the artist and its song a symbol of
art. This nightingale through its symbolism, seems to provide a poetic immortality; the individual song
endures. But the word "forlorn' is there; the nightingale fades. The ground reality is different from the
artistic reality. At the ground level, the poet realizes that the real human experience suffering sickness,
sorrow and early death cannot escape the conflict. But on the level of poetic creation the conflict disappears.
Transitoryhumanhappinessis givenpermanenceinadifferentsense bybeingembodiedinart.
Mortal beauties pass away, but not those of art. This theme of Ode to a Nightingale in the seventh
stanza is further extended into Ode to a Grecian Urn. The urn provides a momentary emotional state of joy
and beauty to the poet. But, in this poem, he does not allow his state to enter the poem and disturb its own
objective state. He is concerned to establish at least one enduring value below the sphere of the moon, and
he finds it in the existence of the beauty of art. It is the only way in which human feeling and natural
loveliness can be given lasting significance. The happy boughs that cannot shed their leaves and the lover
who can never kiss, but whose love can never fade, are types of the only earthly paradise that exists; and the
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5. factthatitisnotquiteof thekindthatmenarelookingfor isnotnow intheforegroundofconsciousness.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. "I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its
beauty". "Truth" means "that which has lasting value". Other emotions of love, pleasure and other forms of
value pass away but beauty lasts in a lasting quasi-permanent form.And so the artist has to know only this –
beauty is truth and truth is beauty. With this knowledge he can solve the conflict between transience and
permanency and can attain joy. But it is no solution for the common man who is nowhere with his misery
andsufferingstillwithhim.
In the Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn, Keats leaves the artist where he is and Keats
returns to ordinary human experience, to the problem of happiness in life. The Ode on Melancholy
recognizes the sadness is the inevitable complement of the moments of intense sensuous happiness that so
farhavebeenthepeaksofhisexperience.
ShedwellswithBeauty-Beautythatmustdie;
And Joy, whose handis everathislips
Biddingadieu;(21-23)
Therefore, it is vain to escape this pain; it is inevitable. Joy and beauty are transient and therein lies
the source of melancholy. In such a situation what one is expected to do is to make the moment sufficient to
itselfandstoreas muchbeautyandjoyas possibleuncertaintiescontinue.
In the Ode to Autumn again the moment seems sufficient. It appears as if everything has reached
fruitionandripenessisall.Thequestionarises–
Wherearethesongs ofSpring?Ay,wherearethey?(line23)
Thereisasweepinganswer –
Thinknotofthem,thouhastthymusictoo,– (line24)
Any particularanswer is hurriedlyescaped.
The fact appears that in the Odes Keats does not come to any conclusion and makes no synthesis.
He also does not remove confusion between the permanent value reached with some speculative solution in
some belief and value permanently accessible to the individual.Autumn is seen as something accessible to
the individual and man is advised not to think anything beyond that. That is why –Think not of them, thou
hastthymusictoo,–
All the Odes have their source in conflict and the resolution is uncertain. That makes them
supreme examples of Negative Capability. Grahm Hough, in his book The Romantic Poets, (1963), says –
"they are in fact supreme examples of Negative Capability, 'when a man is capable of being in uncertainties,
mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason'." (p. 179). He believes in them and so
his solution is incomplete. It is probably in the nature of the romantic imagination that its achievements
shouldbeincomplete.Itisalsointhenatureofhumanlife.
Keats's idea of Negative Capability has been identified with the idea of poet's impersonality. This
identification is suggested by Keats's poem Ode to a Nightingale which has been taken by many critics as a
poem explaining Keats's idea about poetry in general. It has been read as a poem about poetry itself.
Specifically, it is a Romantic kind of poetry.Akey term for Romantic poetry is imagination. For Keats, the
imagination was primarily a means of achieving a sympathetic oneness between the self and other things –
between an observing human being and the person, creature or object being observed. In one of his letters,
Keats claimed: "If a Sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick about the
Gravel."This is a specific instance of Keats's repeated suggestion in his letters that the poetic imagination is
exhibited by the poet's capacity to dissolve his own identity in an act of empathy with something outside the
self. He writes that the "Poetical Character…. has no self—it is everything and nothing—It has no
character….APoet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no Identity". Instead, the
poet is continually informing "filling some other Body". Keats's account of the poetic imagination and the
character of the poet lends further support to the claim that Ode to a Nightingale is a poem about poetry
since its speaker (the poet) strives to escape from suffering by losing his own identity and becoming one
with the nightingale through an act of sympathetic identification. And it is the poetic imagination – the
'wings ofPoesy' –whichholdsoutthegreatestpromisefor such amergingofspeakerandbird.
In modern criticism Keats's Negative Capability has been given a new meaning. It has been taken
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Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability

6. as being very close to the modern literary theory of ambiguity. In their book Reading Poetry, an
Introduction, Tom Furniss and Michael Bath (Pearson Education, 1996) have this to say about Keats's
NegativeCapability–
In poetry, then, ambiguity can serve to enrich and complicate meaning in ways which may allow
us to reread poems many times without feeling that they have become obvious or stale. It is often the
ambiguity of a poem which gives it its subtle charge, or makes it challenging and continually interesting and
stimulating.An ambiguous moment in a poem can continue to intrigue us even after reading it many times.
In fact, we would conclude by arguing that the ability to remain open to potential ambiguity, rather than
attempting to find the 'proper' meaning, is one of the skills or attitudes which is most crucial to develop in
reading poetry. In this way, we would be developing a response towards poems reminiscent of Keats's
descriptionof whathecalled'NegativeCapability':
at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man ofAchievement especially in Literature and
which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of
beinginuncertainties,Mysteries,doubts, withoutanyirritablereachingafterfactandreason.(P.227-28)
Ambiguity is a poem consists of confusion, uncertainty and doubt about the meaning of the poem.
Keats might not have thought about ambiguity in a poem but his idea of Negative Capability almost
suggests it.Although the celebration of ambiguity in literature is largely a twentieth-century development,
creative writers throughout history have exploited ambiguity for various literary effects. Although
Classical and Neoclassical rhetoric sought to eliminate ambiguity as a fault, all writers followed the rule of
propriety. Shakespeare played with the ambiguities of language almost as much as Joyce.Although Samuel
Johnson rebuked Shakespeare for indulging in punning, such pillars of Augustan poetry as Pope made
brilliant use of puns and double meanings. In this sense, twentieth-century literary criticism can be said to
have caught on to an important aspect of literary practice which earlier critics had either disapproved of or
beenblindto.Keatswas awareof itinanotherway.
NOTES
Johnson, Samuel. From Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's Lives of the English Poets. 3 vols. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1905. The Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905)
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/gray.html.
Daiches,David.CriticalApproachesToLiterature,Longman,1977,P.95
Daiches,David.CriticalApproachesToLiterature,Longman,1977,P.95
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoJ. H. Reynoldson3 may1818, Pp.122-23
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoJ. H. Reynoldson3 February1818, P.86
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoJ. H. Reynoldson19 February1818, P.93
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoRichardWoodhouseon27 October1818, Pp.194-95
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoGeorgeandTomKeatson 22 December1817,P.60
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoBenjaminBaileyon22November1817,P.55
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoGeorgeandGeorgianaKeatson 16December1818, P.227
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoBenjaminBaileyon22November1817,P.55
Selected letters of John Keats: based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. ed. Grant F. Scott, (Rev. ed.) Cambridge
(Mass) ;London:HarvardUniversityPress, 2002. LettertoRichardWoodhouseon27 October1818, Pp.194-95
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Keats's Theory Of Negative Capability